Obama documentary maker: The only negative aspect of Obama is … Republicans

posted at 12:10 pm on March 9, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

Allahpundit introduced you to the story of the Obama campaign documentary — allow CNN’s Piers Morgan to introduce you to its producer, documentarian Davis Guggenheim. Morgan fillets Guggenheim after the filmmaker insists that he found no negatives at all about Barack Obama, and that the only negative aspect of Obama’s term as President comes from … his opposition. No, seriously:

Daniel Halper has a partial transcript, but I want to complete it, bolding the part where Guggenheim gets stumped on Obama’s negatives:

Piers Morgan: “Most documentary makers balance these movies with the negative as well as the positive. What are the negatives in your movie about Barack Obama?

Davis Guggenheim: “Well, I mean the negative for me was, there were too many accomplishments. I had 17 minutes to put them all in there.”

Piers Morgan: “Oh, come off it! You can’t say that with a straight face. Come on.”

Davis Guggenheim: “I’m looking at you right now with a straight face.”

Piers Morgan: “The only negativity about Barack Obama is there are too many positives?”

Davis Guggenheim: “That was the negative — excuse me, that was the negative for me.”

Piers Morgan: “Oh.”

Davis Guggenheim: The challenge for me is, I wanted to put more in there. I did.

Piers Morgan: But are there any negatives in there?

Davis Guggenheim: [pause] I think there are negatives in the sense that, the challenges when you’re trying to pass health care in a really toxic environment, in terms of the opposition he’s had, the political climate in Washington. I think that’s — Time and time again you hear that from people who work closely with him. He says, you know — they — he really ran hoping to change the political climate in Washington, and that hasn’t changed, and he, you know, he’s wanted to bring people together, he’s wanted to compromise, he’s wanted, you know, to bring people together to make decisions, I say that in the movie, and he hasn’t had another side working with him.

Piers Morgan: “But where do you find fault in him, personally?”

Davis Guggenheim: “I — you know, I don’t. I don’t, frankly.”

Piers Morgan: “He’s a perfect human being?”

Davis Guggenheim: “Well, no. but I’m really quite in awe of him, as a leader, and the choices he’s made.”

Piers Morgan: “I mean, I’m only asking because you are a well-known documentary maker, and this would be the first movie, I guess, you’ve made where it’s all completely positive. And even you personally don’t see any negative at all in the guy. Do you think you were the right guy to make this? I mean, are you dispassionate enough to make a Barack Obama video?”

Davis Guggenheim: “But, Piers, you haven’t seen the movie. You’ve only seen the trailer.”

Piers Morgan: “Well, I’ve asked you to list all the negatives and you said the only negative was you couldn’t put enough positives in.”

Davis Guggenheim: “Well, that’s true. That’s true.”

Awww … the only negative Guggenheim could find was that Obama couldn’t charm people out of their political principles. This looks like a great way to spend 17 minutes, although if you really want a tongue bath of this magnitude, all you have to do is turn on MSNBC during their prime-time programming. You get a lot more than 17 minutes of this kind of hero-worship there.

Morgan skewers Guggenheim at the end:

Piers Morgan: How much did it cost, and who paid?

Davis Guggenheim: Well, I’ll let the campaign tell you that. I, you know, I took a pay cut to make this. But, you know, the — again, I make movies –

Piers Morgan: I’m surprised you weren’t paying him, by the sound of it. For the sheer honor and joy.

Well, this is a campaign advertisement, so it’s not like Team Obama would let Guggenheim include data points like the mirage of shovel-ready jobs, Operation Fast and Furious, or Solyndra, just to name a few items off the top of my head. Still, I wish Guggenheim well and hope that he wins a much-deserved Riefenstahl Award for his efforts. Morgan deserves an Emmy for that humorous dismantling of a guest, but I suspect he won’t get a nomination for that segment.

Update: I didn’t recall that Guggenheim won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, but Jake Tapper did — and he points out a few more inconvenient truths that Guggenheim almost certainly leaves out of his “documentary.”

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